You're not alone fighting bullies

Oct. 23, 2013

Updated 2:32 p.m.

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Students at San Clemente High School make signs for Cool to Be Kind, an anti-bullying organization. The second annual anti-bullying march will be held Friday at Main Beach in Laguna Beach. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Students at San Clemente High School make signs for Cool to Be Kind, an anti-bullying organization. The second annual anti-bullying march will be held Friday at Main Beach in Laguna Beach. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

People's March against Bullying

What: Children, parents and community leaders march for peace and kindness in memory of those children lost to hate.

When: 5 p.m. Friday

Where: Main Beach, Laguna Beach

Problem or crisis: 800-273-TALK

I am the mother of a bullied child.

Those are words I never fathomed would define me and my family. My family is typical, from an outsider's view. Hard-working father, stay-at-home mother who volunteered in the school's PTA and the classroom and three beautiful children. What people didn't see is that we felt alone and isolated, terrorized – and we lived at the end of our collective rope for more than seven years.

We taught our children, most notably our oldest, that you always treat others with respect. Don't lower yourself to the level of those who may ridicule you, and always, always trust that adults and authority figures will do the right thing.

We believed that bullying was entirely controllable, if it existed at all, and there were rules to protect our children if something happened at school. Bullying didn't seem real, and if it was going to happen to any family, ours was not going to be it. I couldn't have been more wrong, and sadly our story is not unique.

The bullying started for my oldest child in third grade and steadily escalated.

My child had been pegged with rocks, jumped, stabbed with a pencil, threatened, cyberbullied and physically assaulted more times than I can count, and we, as a family, had received multiple death threats. And that's only a sampling.

We had sought the assistance of all levels of school administration to no avail. We were forced to home-school twice, and my child never was given the opportunity to graduate with the rest of the eighth-grade class because safety could not be guaranteed.

Our family felt broken.

After years of fighting this battle on all fronts, alone and with the knowledge that we had reached a critical level, I was referred to a woman by the name of Anna Mendez. I had read about her son's horrific experiences and felt she simply wouldn't have time for us.

We didn't expect the amazing gift of support and help that we received. Without skipping a beat, Mendez stood by our family in our darkest hour. She held my hand at district-level meetings to discuss our child's situation and always advocated for our child even when I had no tears left, no words to utter and no hope.

Mendez, through the nonprofit National Association of People Against Bullying, showed our family that bullying is a formidable adversary, but we as a collective community can make a difference. She, along with her family and anti-bullying group, constantly reassured my child that this monster that is bullying was not going to win.

Our battle is not over as bullying and its residual effects are long-lasting. But what we know now, the one thing that keeps us going as a family since that dark day in 2011, is that we aren't alone.

There is a community of advocates and families just like ours who know we will make a difference against bullying if we keep spreading our story.

We are not alone.

– Jennifer Lamas lives in Laguna Niguel and will be joining residents from Dana Point and around Orange County for the second annual People's March against Bullying in Laguna Beach this Friday.

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